I have continued this post on from my first one which is already quite long and slightly different from this one so if you are just starting on the Zoe Health Study then you may want to read that page first.
This is my experience of Day 1 and the questions I had. Continue reading Zoe Study – Day One
I have just started the Zoe nutrition study, having ordered it in July. My kit arrived on a Friday and I set aside the Monday to start the process. I thought I would log my questions about the study here in case that helped anyone else. Continue reading Zoe Nutrition Study – My Questions
For my son’s 7th birthday I wanted to make a digger construction birthday cake but I am a once a year theme cake baker so it needed to be something relatively simple!
I obviously went to Pinterest to gather some ideas and amalgamated a few options to come up with an easy cake for me to make.
The cake is made up of 2 sections – for the bottom section I made a standard Victoria sponge cake but used the traditional method of mixing the butter (actually Stork) and caster sugar, before adding the eggs, self-raising flour and other ingredients. I made sure I whisked the eggs first and also sifted the flour.
As I was using a big 9 inch tin I did two bakes each with the following ingredients:
140g caster sugar
140g butter/Stork
3 eggs
140g self-raising flour
1 level tsp baking powder
2 tblsp milk
I cooked each cake for around 20 minutes at 175 degrees C.
These cakes came out really nicely – soft, fluffy and moist. I let them cool off and then levelled them so that I could stack them. I used a filling of jam and buttercream.
Once this bottom layer was flat I put a crumb coat of butter icing over it, rolled out one 250g pack of yellow fondant icing
For the top layer I made a chocolate cake. I don’t make many chocolate cakes I have to admit as I don’t really eat them but I’m so glad I got this recipe from BBC Good Food as it was really tasty (maybe with the yoghurt added it was more moist?).
I halved the ingredients shown in the recipe (as I only had one smaller but deep 7 inch cake tin) and made 2 cakes (I whisked the 3 eggs up and measured out half of that mixture for each cake). These cakes rose really well so I had a fair amount of spare bits to eat when I levelled the cakes off!
The chocolate butter cream was really tasty – I just made half as I was planning on covering the cake in yellow fondant.
I used some of the butter cream for a crumb coat and then used another 250g pack of yellow fondant (plus a bit that was left from the base) to cover it.
Then it was just a case of digging out some of the cake and making it into crumbs. I had given a couple of my son’s toys a good clean to use on the cake and had bought some cute cones from Amazon. I already had a box of letter cutters that I had bought a few years ago so used some more black icing to make his name.
As I say, I am pretty much a once year baker but was happy with how this turned out and he loved it too!
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If it wasn’t enough that we were thinking that we were being restricted to seeing only 2 other families over Christmas, that has now been restricted further, with some families in tier 4 now unable to mix with anyone else on Christmas Day. This leaves some people with a massive turkey that they now have to eat on their own or just with a small number of family members. So if you need help with how to cut up a turkey – here it is! Continue reading How to Cut Up a Turkey
There was a post on a facebook group I am on recently where someone asked on ideas to feed 4 people for 8 days for less than £20. In fact the specific amount was £17.64 and they actually wanted lunch and dinner but I thought that this was a good challenge to undertake so here is my list of dinners for that amount: Continue reading Feed 4 People for 8 Days for Less Than £20
